ISPR Presence News

Monthly Archives: December 2011

Join us at Med-e-Tel 2012 (18-20 April 2012) – 10th edition – and actively participate in the educational and information program of seminars, workshops, demonstrations and interactive panel discussions on eHealth, Telemedicine and ICT applications in medicine, health and social care. Med-e-Tel is the official event of the International Society for Telemedicine & eHealth (www.isfteh.org), the international federation of national associations who represent their country’s Telemedicine and eHealth stakeholders. Supported by a wide range of other national and international associations and institutions as well, this three day meeting and networking event brings together stakeholders and leading experts from around the world to present and share recent achievements and developments in the field. Past editions of Med-e-Tel were also accredited (by the European Union of Medical Specialists) to give up to 18 hours of CME (Continuing Medical Education) for medical professionals. Accreditation for Med-e-Tel 2012 is being applied for. Read more on Call: Med-e-Tel 2012…

[Image: EarthCam’s street-level webcam, located at 46th and Broadway, puts viewers face-to-face with the crowd.]

EarthCam Welcomes 2012 with a 3D New Year’s Eve Webcast Live from Times Square

Broadcast for web and mobile from over 50 locations worldwide.

New York, NY (PRWEB) December 28, 2011

Once again, EarthCam will be the exclusive provider of the live 3D feeds from Times Square and will serve as host to the world as it presents its 16th annual webcast of the New Year’s Eve celebrations from over 50 locations around the globe.

EarthCam is proud to deliver exclusive views of this famous party from the heart of New York City. An estimated one million people flock to Times Square every year to watch as the New Year’s Eve Ball descends, and over the years millions more have watched on EarthCam.com. Since the EarthCam cameras are webcasting 24/7 every day of the year, viewers can drop in on Times Square long after the confetti has fallen to watch time-lapse video from the event and enjoy live views.

EarthCam will offer three 3D webcams, delivering a truly unique viewing experience. A special birds-eye view webcam allows visitors to watch as the massive crowds gather at the Crossroads of the World and showcases a perfect view of the famous New Year’s Eve Ball. The other two 3D cams will be mobile, and will travel through the crowds in order to capture all the energy and best moments of the night. Visitors to EarthCam’s website will be able to enjoy the excitement from several angles. Multiple HD webcams are located throughout Times Square, featuring all the sights and sounds of the city. To see highlights from the 2011 3D webcast, visit http://www.earthcam.com/nye3D2011. Read more on EarthCam welcomes 2012 with a 3D New Year’s Eve webcast live from Times Square…

The nature and limits of perception are fiercely contested — both by analytic and continental philosophers as well as researchers in other disciplines. For example, some take ethical perception, or perceptual access to forms or structures, to be genuine phenomena, whereas others find this empirically or philosophically implausible. Furthermore, it remains disputed whether in ordinary sensory awareness we perceive objects, facts, representations, sense data, qualia, concepts, or other entities.

Furthermore, the intense interdisciplinary interest in perception — spanning psychology, art, neuroscience and psychiatry, amongst other areas — can promise to provide philosophy with exciting new resources and opportunities for collaborative inquiry. Yet, it also raises questions about the boundaries of philosophical investigation into perception, including whether philosophy has such any legitimate role at all.

In this conference, we seek to explore the scope of the philosophy of perception (understood as broadly as possible). We invite abstracts of around 500 words for presentations of 20 minutes on any topic related to perception.

[Image: This photo, courtesy Societe des Arts technologiques (SAT), shows a child following the movements of an avatar (on screen) during a demonstration of a new therapy designed to treat anxiety and social behavior issues, at the St. Justine Hospital Center in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.]

Doctors look to treat sick children in virtual worlds

Doctors in a domed laboratory in Canada are designing a virtual world where they hope to one day treat traumatized children with colorful avatars using toy-like medical gadgets.

December 27, 2011 by Michel Viatteau

Sensory stimulation could be used to make a burn victim feel she is encased in a block of ice. Three-dimensional images of a child’s bedroom at home could make him forget he is in a hospital.

“You could take a child suffering from burns and put him in a polar environment, crossing the threshold of reality, to dull his pain,” said Patrick Dube, who is leading a team of medics from Montreal’s Sainte-Justine hospital and software engineers at the Society for Arts and Technology.

“We know that cognitive illusions have an effect on the perception of pain,” he said.

At the Satosphere, an 18-meter-wide (60-foot) dome originally designed to provide spectators with a 360-degree view of art projections, the team has set up a hospital room, or “living lab”, to try out new treatment ideas.

“We have entered the future,” or so says the intro blurb to Hyper Spaces, the current show at Oakville Galleries, and it’s an ambitious, if literally impossible, declaration (the future, being the future, can’t be inhabited or seen until it becomes the present, at which point it’s no longer the future, is it?)

But never mind all that. A little introductory drama is warranted for a show that looks to grapple with architectural virtuality — not exactly a blockbuster sales pitch, you might say. But thanks to ever-more transporting technology, we’re able to imagine and experience space simultaneously, almost seamlessly, and the possibilities and implications of that merging reality/unreality is tantalizing indeed. Read more on Hyper Spaces gallery show explores merging of real and virtual space…

4th or 5th of March in Orange County, CA, USA
In conjunction with IEEE Virtual Reality 2012

SEARIS provides a forum for researchers and practitioners working on the design, development, and support of realtime interactive systems (RIS). These systems span from Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (MR) environments to novel Human-Computer Interaction systems (such as multimodal or multitouch architectures) and entertainment applications in general. Their common principle is a strong user centric orientation which requires real-time processing of simulation aspects as well as input/output events according to perceptual constraints. Therefore, we encourage researchers and developers of real-time human computer interaction systems of all flavors to share their experiences and learn from each other during this workshop. Read more on Call: 5th Workshop on Software Engineering and Architectures for Realtime Interactive Systems (SEARIS) 2012…

After nightfall on Tuesday, the Darvick family of Birmingham, Mich., began their Hanukkah rituals, just as they had done for years.

Debra and Martin Darvick set out a tin menorah given to them by long-gone relatives. Their son, Elliot, 27, struck a match and lighted the first candle. And his sister, Emma, 24, joined in a prayer.

But the Darvicks celebrated this centuries-old tradition with a modern twist — the family was in three different cities across the country, but connected by Skype.

“We call it Skypanukkah,” Elliot said of the family’s second year of using the service’s video chat. “Being able to use Skype on a holiday allows me to basically build a memory with my family that I couldn’t have otherwise.”

Though Skype is now eight years old, the software — and others like it, including Apple’s FaceTime and Google chat — has become a regular fixture in a growing number of American homes, providing new ways for families to stay connected in an age where generations are less likely to gather around the table on Sunday afternoons to share a meal. Read more on Video chat reshapes domestic rituals…

The IFIP International Conference on Entertainment Computing explores the application of computational technology to entertainment. The conference brings together practitioners and researchers interested in the art and design of entertainment computing applications. ICEC welcomes submissions on the design, engineering, application and theory of entertainment technology. We solicit paper, poster and demonstration submissions, as well as proposals for tutorials and workshops. In addition to regular scientific contributions we encourage contributions specifically for and by the industry that will be presented in a dedicated session. Papers will be published via Springer and archived in the SpringerLink digital library. Read more on Call: IFIP International Conference on Entertainment Computing (ICEC 2012)…

Between smartphones that answer your casual questions and mass-multiplayer videogames, it’s getting more difficult to make a distinction between the real world and the one inside your laptop. But why worry about it? Go to www.chicagohumanities.org and watch William Gibson — who wrote the sci-fi classic “Neuromancer” and coined the term “cyberspace” — talking at the Chicago Humanities Festival about how technology is changing our day-to-day lives and whether we should be self-conscious about it. “Look at the Victorians. For some reason, they had a need to deny that sex existed,” he says. “When we’re the Victorians, I think that people will say, ‘For some reason they had a need to distinguish between what they thought of as the real and the virtual.’?” Read more on William Gibson on real vs. virtual and singularity…